Trumpet Dude» horn

Ear Training

Trumpet Dude — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:52:09 +0000

One aspect of being a musician that is extremely important, but too often overlooked by teachers and students, is learning and practicing to hear music in your head. This aural skill can be acquired through practice and is referred to as ear training. Ear training is where musicians learn to identify all the basic elements of music, such as intervals, chords, and rhythms intuitively without reading it from the sheet music. This is a good skill to begin developing as soon as possible. Ludwig van Beethoven began to lose his hearing in his twenties and ultimately became completely deaf, but he had developed the ability to hear the music he created in his head to a great extent. This skill will not only help with your sight reading abilities, but also your improvisational creativity and of course, any composing work you ultimately pursue. While the use of a keyboard will aid in this endeavor, practicing this with your voice is very helpful too. Singing out what it is you’d like to play on your horns first is something I always recommend anyway. To begin this process there are several good resources you can purchase and I recommend you do so. I have added many of these to my superstore and have placed a good one for you to start with here. Start practicing!

Conn Vintage One

Trumpet Dude — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:45:59 +0000

Since the Conn Vintage One (aka Wicked Connie) is the trumpet I have chosen to play, I figured it would be a good place to start my equipment writings. This horn is sweet, combining the best of classic CG Conn trumpets with a modern design. It has a 459” bore size (11.66mm), hand lapped monel pistons, a patented Modular Valve Weight (MVW) system kit, a 1-1/2 CKB mouthpiece, a deluxe double case and carries a Five year warranty.

The Vintage Ones all come with an annealed one-piece hand hammered bell and can be purchased with a variety of bell materials and horn finishes. The bells come in yellow brass, rose brass bell or sterling silver.

Vintage One Brochure (requires Adobe Reader for viewing)

A purchaser had this to say about the Vintage One, “I own several trumpets as do most pro players and I found myself gravitating to the Vintage One over all the others (which include a vintage Benge, Martin, Yamaha, and Schilke). These are all great horns but the Conn Vintage One combines the intonation and slotting of a Schilke with the rich warm sound of a Martin. It plays clear and colorful in all registers and really sings. I love the fast short throw valves.”

The Vintage One is available to you through my online Trumpet Superstore. Buy one today, you’ll be glad you did!

2,3, Bopdoodle-ooo

Trumpet Dude — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:58:00 +0000

In the last doodle, I began talking about jazz improvisation as its own language and conversation. It is just that, but of course there has to be more than questions and answers. As ‘jazzheads’ we need to be able to make statements, sentences and paragraphs. A statement can be thought of as any ‘phrase’ that is longer than two bars.

The ability to ‘track,’ while learning to develop our phrases is of utmost importance. I encouraged you all to practice developing one bar phrases, and resting a bar in between those thoughts. Although I didn’t instruct you to move on from one bar phrases, I’m certain you all did anyway. That’s ok, because I want you now to focus on two bar phrases. After you think you have that down, move on to three bar phrases, or statements. Now in practicing building your phrases as statements, however, I want you to be strict in stopping at the end of the third bar. This will help your mental discipline in planning and developing phrasing abilities while keeping track of where you are within a chart.

Meaningful conversations can be emotional, and I hope they are. In order to express the thoughts and emotions you may think and feel, you will need to be able to draw on your jazz vocabulary.

To develop our jazz vocabulary, we must begin to become fluent on our instruments. What do I mean by becoming fluent? Just that – ‘fluent’, like you verbally speak your native language or other speaking languages that you have mastered and become ‘fluent’ in. My exposure to this concept came from the late great Oscar Peterson. In his words, in order to truly play jazz you had to be ‘fluent’ on your instrument. As instrumentalists that means we have to have committed all of the scales and their chord relationships to complete and utter memory. To begin we must master all twelve of the major scales and two of their basic modifications.

MAJOR- C Scale C D E F G A B C Chord Relationships CMaj., CMaj.7, CMaj.9

Practice these stopping on the seventh, eighth and ninth note of the scale. Know your Major scales and the rest is a snap!!

DOMINANT- C Scale C D E F G A Bb C Chord Relationships C7, C7/9, C13

Practice this scale pattern in all twelve keys. Think of this scale as a major scale with the 7th note lowered a half step.

Minor C Scale C D Eb F G A Bb C Chord Relationships Cmin., Cmin.7, Cmin.9

Again practice in all twelve keys and play the scale to the eleventh note of the scale to sound the ninth of the chord. Think of this VERY popular scale as a major scale with the 3rd and 7th note down one half step.

Now although I want you to work at practicing these scales so they can become ingrained where you can play them in your sleep, I recommend that you conduct your improvisation sessions as a separate time period of your practice.

Finally, have fun, begin to spend time each day simply ‘doodling’ on your horn, playing whatever you can think of and whatever note sequences you decide to string together. Don’t worry about the rules when you’re doing this, just play and listen. You’ll discover some things that sound really cool and begin to develop ‘licks’ that you really like. When you come across something you dig, transpose it to the other keys.

Keep jamming!!

Wicked Connie

Trumpet Dude — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:03:07 +0000

As Doc Severinsen has correctly pointed out, practice and how we practice is essential to how well we play. However, a quality instrument can make a world of difference in the finished playing produced. Some of the earliest types of trumpets dating to around 1500 BC, although quite inventive and interesting, were likely very difficult to play well. In comparison to the historic trumpets our predecessors played, the old ad proclaiming ‘you’ve come a long way baby’, should ring out. In fact, some of the horns on the market today are downright pieces of art and beauty!

The mouthpiece selections are quite nice too. Myself, I play on a Vintage One trumpet by Selmer Conn and use a gold-plated Denis Wick 2W mouthpiece. This combination lets me have a big fat tone in the lower registers and an absolutely scintillating quality in the extreme upper register. My wife teases me that I’m having affairs with “Connie Wick,” and “Wicked Connie.” I also play on a handcrafted flugelhorn made by Tony Scodwell with a Josef Klier 2F mouthpiece.

Mouthpiece and horn selection can and should be quite personal based on the individual player’s physical makeup, playing style, type of music and the setting they play in. While I love my chosen horns and consider myself a very loyal type, there are several horns available that I would love to get my hands on!

The Trumpet Superstore carries a complete line of trumpets, flugelhorns, mouthpieces, carrying bags and accessories all at the best prices you can imagine.

You’ll find horns by Amati, Bach, Blessing, Conn, Dynasty, Getzen, Giardinelli, Jean-Baptiste, Jupiter, Kanstul, King, Schilke, Selmer, and Stomvi. The trumpet line includes a good selection of student, intermediate and professional level horns. I chose my line of student horns rather prudently and chose only the ones I considered to add value to the student’s playing endeavors. My student selection includes horns by Amati, Conn, Dynasty USA, and Jean-Baptiste.

Mouthpiece makers include Asymmetric, Bach, Blessing, Bob Reeves, Curry, Denis Wick, Giardinelli, Holton, Jet Tone, King, Laskey, Marcinkiewicz, Rudy Muck, Schilke, Stork, Warburton, and Yamaha. The selection includes mouthpieces that are silver plated, gold plated and even a few that are solid silver! You will also find mouthpiece boosters and mouthpiece pouches.

The Superstore also carries a complete selection of mutes for trumpets and flugelhorns, mute holders and mute carrying cases.

The bags and accessories section includes trumpet-carrying bags of all makes and models, mouthpiece pouches, instrument stands and more.

The valve oil and slide lube section was devised for easy access for those quick need purchases. In addition to the valve oil and slide lube, this section has cleaning equipment too.